Wausau officials balk at median contractor's bill for $64 an hour

Jun. 11, 2014

Revi Design of Schofield, which has a studio at 911 N. Sixth St. in Wausau seen here, billed the city an average of $64 an hour per employee who worked on a west-side median project. / Theresa Clift/Daily Herald Media

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Wausau Finance Committee Chairman Keene Winters demonstrates during a meeting Monday how he concludes that Revi Design overcharged the city for work on the Highway 52 Parkway median project. / Theresa Clift/Daily Herald Media

The city underpaid workers who added improvements to medians along Highway 52 Parkway this fall, the state found. / Daily Herald Media file photo

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WAUSAU — Revi Design of Schofield overcharged the city by as much as $14,200 for its work on the Highway 52 Parkway median project, city officials claim.

The city will not pay the bill, a lump sum that is not itemized, until the company provides more documentation, including wage rates for each employee who worked on the project and the hours they worked, the city’s Finance Committee decided Tuesday.

The city is trying to rectify a mistake it made this fall when it failed to apply to the Department of Workforce Development for state-mandated wage rates before hiring private companies to do work for the $112,000 median project. State law requires municipalities to pay what are called prevailing wages for projects costing more than $100,000.

The city paid Revi Design, which led the project, $24,250 to prepare the site for bird sculptures, landscaping and other amenities added to several medians along the city’s west-side entrance.

After the city received an outside legal opinion that confirmed it had violated state laws, the council voted to apply for wage rates retroactively and pay the difference to the companies, if any were found.

Revi then billed the city for an additional $18,893, which the Finance Committee unanimously recommended the council approve late last month. The committee has now overturned that recommendation after committee and council members Dave Oberbeck and Keene Winters raised concerns at a meeting Tuesday.

If Revi were to receive the full $43,000 for which it’s billing the city, each of its 14 employees who worked on the project for a total of 670 hours would be paid $64 an hour.

Oberbeck, who often deals with the state’s prevailing wage policies running his private architecture firm, said he thinks the Revi workers should have been paid about $43 an hour, according to state documents. That would cost the city an extra $4,680, not $18,893, in order to comply with the state law.

Workforce Development officials declined Tuesday to indicate how much Revi workers should have been making hourly for the project; however, a document the agency provided does not indicate any workers should have made as much as $64 an hour for the project.

The City Council was set to vote Tuesday on whether to amend the budget for the expense, coming from Community Development Block Grant money and Capital Improvement Project borrowing, but the matter was pulled from the agenda until the city receives more information and it is reconsidered by the Finance Committee in two weeks.

The city received some documents from Revi on Monday, including check stubs employees had received, but not itemized so officials could see how much workers were paid for the median project alone, City Attorney Anne Jacobson said.

“We shouldn’t even have this in front of us to consider (without more information),” Oberbeck said.

The city also violated a state law when it awarded no-bid contracts to companies to work on the project, the legal opinion confirmed.

A call to the Revi Design office seeking comment was not returned Tuesday.

Theresa Clift can be reached at 715-845-0665. Follow her on Twitter as @tclift.